A blog about food, focusing on vegan cooking for one person (or two small eaters).

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Thursday, August 21, 2014

Chinese Kickin’ Salad for One

This is a play on Chinese Chicken Salad (the kind you can’t
get in China but is all over the rest of the world—I’ve seen it in the US, Germany,
Belgium, and France). The dressing is incredibly easy and tasty, and I find
myself using it for all kinds of things far beyond this salad.

The Teriyaki Tofu recipe that follows is NOT for a single
serving. It’s just not practical to make only one serving’s-worth. The good
news is that you can use these little bites in all kinds of creative ways. I
keep them in a little sealed container and snack on them—they’ll keep for more
than a week unless you chow down on them, like I do. I like to eat all the little
bits of garlic and ginger that have been soaking and baking too. You can
probably smell my breath from here…

For the
Salad:

¾ cup
cabbage, chopped or shredded (any color, but I like a mix)

½
carrot, shredded, grated, or sliced

1
green onion

1 very
small sweet potato, baked or steamed (optional)

3
artichoke heart quarters, cut in half lengthwise (optional)

¼ cup
baked teriyaki tofu (recipe follows)

¼
avocado, sliced lengthwise thinly

1
TBLSP cilantro, chopped finely

1 ½
TBLSP sprouts, bite-sized (pea sprouts, mung bean, or radish)

3
TBLSP crispy noodles

1
tangerine, peeled and segmented

1
TBLSP sunflower seeds

1
TBLSP peanuts

For the
Dressing:

1
TBLSP tamari soy sauce (you can use regular, no problem)

1
TBLSP white or yellow miso

1
TBLSP mirin

1
TBLSP rice vinegar

½
teaspoon of garlic powder

¼
teaspoon of ground ginger

Layer the salad elements or place them in an
appealing pattern in a bowl or plate. Or, you could just toss ‘em all in there,
let ‘em fall where they may.

Put all the dressing ingredients into a small bowl
and whisk, or, better, put them into a sealed container and shake vigorously.

Pour the mixed dressing over the salad and
devour!

This dressing multiplies easily. Just put equal amounts of
the four main ingredients together and adjust the garlic and ginger powders to
taste. It goes very nicely on rice or quinoa salads, makes a good marinade for
grilled veggies or tofu, and can dress up a boring steamed veg, like corn on
the cob.

Teriyaki Tofu (not
for One—there will be left-overs)

1
container (14 ounces, or whatever is about a pound) firm tofu

¼ cup
tamari or soy sauce

2
TBLSP mirin or sherry

1
TBLSP granulated sugar

1 inch
of fresh ginger, peeled and minced or put through a garlic press

3
cloves of garlic, peeled and minced or put through a garlic press

Slice the tofu into thin slabs. I like mine
about a quarter-inch thick by half an inch wide by two inches long, but do what
suits you or your recipe. There will be left-overs after the Chinese Kickin’
Salad.

Place the rest of the ingredients (soy sauce,
mirin, sugar, ginger, and garlic) in a bowl large enough to hold the tofu and
for the tofu to be turned a few times. Stir it all together until the sugar
dissolves.

Place the tofu slabs in the sauce and turn them
a few times to make sure that every side of the tofu is covered. I use my
hands, as the tofu is pretty soft and can break easily. If you’re more
fastidious than I am, you could use a wooden spoon.

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and place it in
the refrigerator for half an hour or longer. Turn the tofu over every 15
minutes. I’ve never left it longer than 3 hours, as the tofu didn’t seem
particularly more affected than it had at half an hour. Marinating the tofu makes
it form a little skin that you can’t really see, but when you bake it, it
stiffens in a way that baking plain tofu doesn’t do.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Place the tofu in a SINGLE layer on a non-stick
cookie sheet (not on parchment paper, and don’t grease the sheet unless you
want greasy tofu). I do it in neat rows because then I can tell which I’ve
turned throughout the cooking process. Feel free to be more wacky than I am.

Pour any unabsorbed soy sauce mixture liberally
over the tofu. (There will be plenty.)

Bake for 20 minutes, and then pull the pan out
of the oven and close the oven door. Turn each piece over and return it to the
oven. (I use a pair of forks because I find that tongs weren’t delicate enough.
Don’t use your hands here, though, okay? It’s hot.) The undersides will be wet
and soft and the topsides will be starting to firm up. Some of them may break
during this process, as they’re still very soft. Most of them won’t though.

Bake for another 15 minutes and then pull the
pan out of the oven and close the oven door. Turn each piece over and return it
to the oven. Again, the undersides will be wet and soft and the topsides will
be starting to firm up.

Bake for another 10 minutes and then pull the
pan out of the oven and close the oven door. Turn each piece over and return it
to the oven. Again, the undersides will be wet and soft and the topsides will
be starting to firm up. Yup. That’s the third time and the undersides are still
wet! Don’t fret. The key is that when the leftover sauce is pretty much all
evaporated, the tofu is most likely done. Until then, keep giving them 10 or 20
minute visits to the hot oven and flipping them over.

Remove them from the oven and let them sit
cooling until they’re room temperature. They will be fairly firm on both sides once
they’re cooled. Store in a sealed container in the refrigerator.

I use these little bites in wraps, salads, tofu scrambles,
and as snacks all by themselves. I find that marinating tofu in anything, from
plain soy sauce to salad dressing, and then baking it, has this nice firming effect.
Yummy!

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About Me

I've been a vegetarian in some form or other since I was a teenager. I never liked meat (especially red meat), and I won the battle with my mother when I was 17. Now, back then, you have to realize, it was hard to get tofu or other non-animal proteins in a regular grocery store, so although my general health improved (I stopped getting colds and flus, and I gained enough weight to stop looking like a holocaust survivor), I started having digestive problems.

Western doctors knew even less about nutrition than they know now, Mine suggested that I eat chicken or fish about twice a month to keep my body's own enzymes and acids to a decent level, and then stress wouldn't send me into such a miserable zoo of pain. So I did it. It worked pretty well for quite a while. But in 2006, I went vegan, now that it's easy enough to get non-animal proteins.

Now I'm starting a third blog, on vegan cooking for one (or two). It started with coming home from rehearsal and wanting just one cookie. But then it got fun--what else could I make that didn't involve leftovers, or, in the case of baked goods, guilt for eating the whole batch. And I thought I'd share this collection of recipes that I've accumulated.